


Distraction

by SnowyWolff



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1920s, Alternate Universe - Human, Characters dealing with after effects of ww1, It's Berlin Babey, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:48:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23284282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowyWolff/pseuds/SnowyWolff
Summary: “What were you looking for?” he asked, not quite disinterested.“A distraction.”
Relationships: Prussia/South Italy (Hetalia)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 37





	Distraction

**Author's Note:**

> So the first part of this was a drabble request for Prussia's birthday (which you can find [here](https://writingsofasnowywolff.tumblr.com/post/190330400252/for-prussias-bday-maybe-a-prumano-maybe-set-in)), but then I had to read one of the worst erotic novels in existence for uni (yes you read that right) that contains phrases like "her womb was clamouring like a sea anemone in the tide" and paragraphs about a woman's heart calling out to the tiny tender penis going limp inside of her, so it's no wonder i lost my goddamn mind and wrote the second part of this as a sort of vent to wipe the awful heterosexual aftertaste away ✌️

Gilbert shouldn’t really be at a place like this. If anyone he knew heard he had been there or, God forbid, _saw_ him there, he was going to be in a lot of shit.

But ever since he had returned from the front, from the battlefields and the noise and the death that still woke him in a cold sweat almost every night, he had craved for some release. To meet more people like him.

So he found one of those clubs to slip inside at nighttime in Berlin, though his doubts and insecurities followed him through the smoke and sultry music. Bodies were pressed together in dances he had never learnt, voices blending together into a steady stream of static noise.

He had meant for tonight to be a reprieve from the mundaneness that plagued him in his unemployment, but the amount of people made him queasy.

The noise was starting to buzz in his ears, and it sounded a little like the roar of aeroplanes, and it made him somewhat short of breath.

A hand rested on his arm, someone whispered something in his ear, but he couldn’t hear the words. He couldn’t hear anything. The world was beginning to spin and the smoke was choking him and it all reminded him too much of—

Someone was crouched in front of him—and he must have knelt down to make himself as small as possible—someone with a youthful face and golden eyes that had seen too much of the world. Gilbert could recognize those eyes anywhere; he had the same ones.

“What’s your name?” the man asked, voice deep and calm if heavily accented.

It was a voice Gilbert could cling to, so he said shakily, “Gilbert.”

“All right. Gilbert. Mine is Lovino.” The man held out his hand. It was missing two fingers. “I could really go for a smoke outside right now. Care to join me?”

Gilbert stared at that scarred hand before shakily reaching for it. He was pulled up, the man placing his hand on his lower back to guide him outside. There, Gilbert breathed, deeply like a drowned man, closing his eyes in the cool spring breeze. He could still hear the noise from the club, but it was distant and nonthreatening.

Only when his racing heart no longer felt like breaking from the confines of his chest, did Gilbert dare to open his eyes. The man had lit a cigarette, blowing smoke into the night. He was wearing a suit, but it looked ill-fitting somehow even though it was tailored perfectly. It was as if the man—Lovino—had entirely outgrown his wardrobe but hadn’t found time yet to replace it.

When Lovino caught Gilbert looking, he put his cigarette in his mouth and rummaged around in the pockets of his suit jacket, procuring a pack of cigarettes and a lighter that had seen better days.

“I preferred cigars,” Lovino said as Gilbert took the offered cigarette.

“What changed?” Gilbert couldn’t see what brand it was in the dark, but once Lovino had lit it for him and he breathed in the acrid smoke, he knew it was something cheap, something he would smoke in the trenches.

Lovino shrugged, a one-armed movement, as if his other shoulder didn’t quite feel up to it anymore. “Lots of things changed.”

Gilbert understood and knew Lovino understood that he did.

They smoked quietly until Lovino extinguished his cigarette with the heel of his shoe into the old streets. He pocketed his hands, ruining the lines of his jacket.

“What were you looking for?” he asked, not quite disinterested.

“A distraction.” Gilbert dropped his own cigarette.

Lovino was quiet for a moment, his eyes dark. Then, he asked, “Are you still looking for one?”

And Gilbert nodded.

***

The night lead them to a hotel close by. Lovino ordered the room and Gilbert came upstairs half an hour later, knowing that it wouldn’t matter one way or another, but it was a small comfort.

Lovino waited for him in the hallway, leaning in the door frame of their room. For a moment, they just looked at each other, as if waiting for something, but then Lovino moved inside, shedding his jacket as he did. Gilbert followed after, locking the door behind him, casting the room in darkness, only a streak of moonlight spilling in through the partially closed curtains.

Gilbert peeked around them, finding nothing but an empty street. No one would see them if they left the curtains how they were, giving themselves a little light. Gilbert liked having a little light when he slept now because the darkness was terrifying. It was another kind of no man’s land.

When he turned around, he found Lovino standing by the bed, just watching Gilbert quietly. It made Gilbert a little self conscious, wondering what this man thought of him. Whether those eyes could see right through him, know everything about him with just a glance, judge him for what they found.

Gilbert moved closer, into the partial darkness that hid Lovino, hesitating momentarily. He wasn’t sure how to go about this. In the army it had been easy. If you both had an itch, you’d figure it out, and it’d be unfeeling and mechanical, something quick and almost unfulfilling, plainly physical.

But Gilbert didn’t want something like that. Somehow it didn’t feel right to approach it like that with Lovino, but he was unsure as to what he actually wanted, and with how much Lovino was comfortable.

Still, he would never discover if he just stood a safe distance away. Even if facing things head-on had become harder since the war, it was still something Gilbert knew how to do best. So he stepped into Lovino’s space, lightly resting his shaking hands on the man’s hips.

Lovino peered up at him, faintly amused, but his hands slid up Gilbert’s chest, undoing the buttons at his collar. His thumbs idly stroked the skin where his neck met his shoulders, but then one hand trailed up, slightly ticklish, cupping Gilbert’s jaw and angling his head down.

Gilbert wasn’t used to kissing. He’d kissed some girls when he had been younger, before he had figured out he didn’t like girls, but it had never felt right. And in the war, none of the guys ever wanted to kiss.

But Lovino clearly was used to kissing, mouth soft and experienced. There was a gentleness to it, as if testing the waters, the boundaries, and Gilbert found himself fumbling along, wanting to lose himself in that softness yet afraid that if he did, he would ruin it somehow.

When Lovino pulled back, he looked at Gilbert curiously.

“Have you never—?”

Gilbert could feel his ears flush. “Never kissing. But the, um, other stuff…”

Lovino hummed thoughtfully. “Should I not kiss you?”

“No, I like it.” Then, he added sheepishly, “But I don’t think I’m very good at it.”

“We’ll just have to work on it,” Lovino said with a shrug. “Come then.”

And Gilbert ducked his head to kiss Lovino again, his fingers tightening on Lovino’s hips.

It was soothing, Lovino’s hands warm on his cheek and shoulder. And for a while it was just the gentle push and pull of their lips, during which Gilbert dared to relax, dared to run his hands up along Lovino’s sides, then slid them down again, following the curve toward the man’s behind.

Lovino sighed softly into the kiss, and the hand on Gilbert’s cheek moved to the back of his head, angling it so the kiss deepened, and Gilbert dizzied at the soft touch of Lovino’s tongue.

When Lovino pulled back a little, hands coming to rest on Gilbert’s shoulders before pushing off his suspenders and smoothing toward the buttons of his shirt, he looked at Gilbert inquisitively, waiting for a sign to continue.

Gilbert nodded, voice sticking in his throat. There was something so kind about the way Lovino treated him, it was almost too much for Gilbert to bear. He was simply so unused to being treated with decency, with respect.

After his buttons were undone, Gilbert shrugged off his shirt and, after a moment of deliberation, took off his undershirt too, letting the items drop to the floor in a heap. Normally, he’d care a bit more about putting them away properly, but he wanted to go back to touching Lovino, who had begun on his own buttons.

Gilbert watched in quiet fascination as Lovino revealed the long scar that ran from his missing fingers all the way up and curling around his shoulder, like a crack splintering in burnt wood.

Gilbert had his own collection of war scars, from the shrapnel wound in his lower back to the largest cutting into his thigh and messing up his knee. The doctor had said Gilbert should count himself lucky to only get off with a small limp instead of half a leg less.

But Lovino’s seemed much more visceral, a lot closer to his heart and head, closer to almost being killed.

Lovino trailed a finger across the scarred tissue of his arm, smiling wryly. “Not an attractive sight, is it?”

Gilbert blinked. “Not really. I mean, as in, it’s not unattractive.” He scratched his head. “I was just thinking.” He turned his hip toward Lovino, pushing down his trousers slightly to show the beginnings of the scar there.

“Had a trench collapse on me. By all means I got off incredibly lucky,” he said. It was a little strange to say it out loud without the usual feeling of claustrophobia accompanying it.

Maybe because Lovino had, in some way, experienced the same thing. The destruction it had left in its wake, both in country and in people. His parents didn’t understand his nihilism, his defeatist attitude, and Gilbert didn’t think anyone but the people who had experienced that sort of despair first-hand could understand.

Lovino kissed him again, long and slow and deep. Then, he kissed along his jaw, down his neck, his chest, his stomach, slowly kneeling as he did. His fingers hooked around the waistband of his trousers and slowly pushed them down, his lips trailing after it, over his scar.

Gilbert’s breath hitched as Lovino nosed his crotch. It had been so long since the last time he had been touched by someone else so intimately, and never so gently.

He pushed his briefs down after meeting Lovino’s enquiring eyes, wanting nothing more than for Lovino to touch him.

Lovino covered his hands momentarily, then pushed them away from his underwear and pulled them off the rest of the way, Gilbert stepping out of them obediently when Lovino patted his calf. And then his mouth was back on the scar, small tender kisses that became little bites as he moved to his inner thigh.

His cock was already half hard—and maybe Gilbert should feel embarrassed that it hadn’t taken much at all, but it had been so _long_ and never like _this_ , where Lovino took his time and didn’t seem at all bothered to be doing this, not unlike most soldiers, who did it just so they could get it in return.

When Lovino took him into his mouth, Gilbert’s knees almost buckled underneath him. He breathed deeply, closing his eyes to find a shred of composure, and shakily tangled his fingers in Lovino’s hair. It made him hum appreciatively, which in turn sent shivers along Gilbert’s spine and made a small moan fall from his lips.

Lovino’s fingers dug into his hips, keeping him still as he hollowed his cheeks and rubbed his tongue against the underside of his cock. When he actually sucked for the first time, Gilbert’s hips bucked involuntarily, but Lovino’s firm grasp kept him in place for the most part, though his right hand slipped slightly. He readjusted his grip, but his mouth continued undisturbed.

Gilbert was trying to keep quiet, afraid of the chance of people overhearing (perhaps irrationally since this seemed like the kind of hotel specifically aimed at these kind of rendezvouses), but the occasional moan still spilt out between the panting and the little gasps he breathed out.

“I—I’m going to—” he gasped, though it sounded too much like dialect to him, so he tightened his fingers in Lovino’s hair, hoping to give him some warning.

Instead of moving away like any soldier normally would, Lovino took him entirely into his mouth and continued sucking through Gilbert’s orgasm. Then, he sat back and swallowed, watching as Gilbert stumbled to the bed to lie down for a second, his stiff leg aching slightly.

He rubbed his scar distractedly as he remembered how to breathe, then glanced at Lovino still knelt on the floor. Despite the moon shining from behind him, his eyes were bright and piercing. Gilbert gestured and, very slowly, Lovino crawled onto the bed toward him. Gilbert kissed him, sighing as Lovino pressed against him.

He could also feel Lovino’s own need press against his thigh and, sliding his hand down to the bulge in Lovino’s pants, he broke the kiss to ask, “What do you want?”

Lovino swallowed, running his fingers along Gilbert’s chest. “Sex.”

“I’m gonna need a moment longer for that,” Gilbert said, hoping Lovino would continue kissing him. Now that it was a valid option, he’d like to abuse it to the fullest, especially because he genuinely enjoyed the way Lovino kissed.

Humming, Lovino indulged him, gently at first but quickly proceeded to bite on Gilbert’s lower lip, slipping his tongue inside his mouth. At the same time, one of Lovino’s hands began to play with his nipples, the other venturing lower and lower.

Gilbert groaned, still feeling a little sensitive, yet distracted enough by everything else Lovino was doing that it was only at the back of his mind. He didn’t really know what to do with his own hands, resting one on Lovino’s shoulder blade to keep him partially pressed against himself and the other resting on Lovino’s hip.

Then, Lovino broke away and undid the button on his trousers, pushing and kicking them down without bothering to get up. Gilbert watched, feelings his fingers itch—and it had always made him self-conscious how much he enjoyed _giving_ pleasure as well, always feeling uncomfortable with the idea of taking and taking and taking.

Lovino straddled his hips but was careful not to put too much weight onto Gilbert’s legs. It was honestly rather touching, Lovino’s concern, a gentleness that perhaps neither had experienced during the war. But when Lovino leaned forward to rut his hips against Gilbert’s, all Gilbert wanted was something more substantial, something perhaps a little rougher. Yet at the same time…

“D’you—” Gilbert had to clear his throat, his voice sounding hoarse to his ears. “D’you have any lubricant?”

Dark eyes stared at him mutely for a second. “I…”

“Because if you want sex that’s fine with me, but I’d rather use something a little more, uh, lubricating than spit because that sure hurt as hell and, well—”

Lovino kissed him quiet. “I have lube. Are you really okay with…?” Lovino frowned.

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Only if you’re fine with it. I don’t mind either.”

Gilbert honestly thought they were wasting time by having this discussing, so he rolled his eyes and pushed at Lovino’s shoulders. “If you have lube and maybe a condom, you can screw me to hell and back for all I care.”

Lovino snorted, and it might have devolved into full laughter had Gilbert not made a frantic gestures between the door and the walls and the window as he got up. “It’s in my coat. Both.”

Gilbert found a tin container and a small bottle of oil, returning to the bed and gratefully slumping back against the sheets. Lovino gently pushed his legs apart, fingers teasing along his thigh and giving his cock a few quick strokes before taking the oil from Gilbert.

After coating his fingers, Lovino glanced at Gilbert for permission, pushing a finger in at Gilbert’s nod.

It had definitely been a while since his last encounter, _a_ _while_ a while, and the intrusion was, despite the lube, a little uncomfortable. Yet, Lovino moved slowly, carefully, asking Gilbert for permission with every finger added, stopping whenever Gilbert couldn’t quite suppress a disgruntled groan.

It was honestly quite touching, this concern Lovino seemed to have for Gilbert. It was so terribly unusual to him, so new, but it was nice and soft, and he kind of never wanted it to end, especially when Lovino slowly removed his fingers and asked him for the tin.

Gilbert gave it to him with slightly shaking hands and watched as Lovino rolled a condom on, glad to see him smear some more lube on his cock as well. Swallowing, Gilbert lied back down and breathed in deeply to relax his body a little.

Lovino’s hand slid over his scar yet again, a little grounding touch that placed itself on his hip. It was hardly something firm, but it was comforting.

“Ready?” Lovino asked quietly, and how the man still had the patience to ask Gilbert for an OK was frankly beyond him, but he nodded and hid his face in the crook of his arm to stifle any noises.

Gilbert didn’t think it would ever be a nice, normal feeling to be entered like this. There would always be something uncomfortable about it, even with Lovino’s thorough preparation. But even when Lovino paused to gauge his reaction, Gilbert wanted more. He bent his good leg around Lovino’s behind, urging him on with a nod and a soft whine until Lovino continued to push in.

Another pause, one Gilbert did appreciate, shifting slightly to make himself more comfortable, breathing out slowly, both to relax himself as well as in quiet anticipation. He opened his eyes, finding Lovino’s ever consuming eyes trained on his own, something not quite like hunger shining within them.

Lovino leaned forward, and the angle made Gilbert gasp, which Lovino then swallowed in a kiss that was much more than anything they had been doing before. More demanding, more consuming, more desperate—more, more, more.

When Lovino began moving, it was much messier and much more uncoordinated than anything they had been doing before, but it was somehow exactly what Gilbert wanted. In his world, there was no perfection anymore; it had been bombed and shattered along the artillery fire and shell shrapnel on fields where both the living and the dead rotted. So the uneven thrusts, the occasional slip of Lovino’s hand that lacked the grip of five fingers and the consequent readjustments, the ache in his leg and his back—it made it _real_. It made it something to believe in in a society that felt like falling apart.

Gilbert bit his hand to keep himself from making noise, but small groans and moans still slipped by, especially when Lovino managed an angle that made Gilbert see stars for one, two, three thrusts before it slipped again. And Lovino covered his own noises by pressing his mouth against Gilbert’s stomach, peppering kisses and licks and bites across his skin, equally disjointed between pain and pleasure as everything else.

They might be broken, both in mind and body, but in that moment of imperfection and bliss, they could be something whole. They could be whole and beautiful and _human_ again. Somehow protected from the cruelty left behind in the scars that litter their body and their mind and their soul, protected from the stares and the whispers and the government breathing down their neck, protected from the madness and the fear and the despair that haunt their dreams during the night and their consciousness during the day.

The world could still be theirs.

When Lovino came, his hips twitched and his head bowed, panting and shaking, before slipping out. He pushed the hair from his eyes and moved next to Gilbert, taking the pressure off his leg while increasing it on his cock with his hand. Gilbert unwound in sputtering bursts, glad that Lovino leaned forward to kiss the sound into silence.

Gilbert shivered as he came down from his high, faintly aware of Lovino pulling tissues from his jacket, first cleaning off himself before returning to the bed to clean Gilbert off.

After, Lovino carefully sat on the edge of the bed, as if hesitating what to do. Maybe he wanted to leave, but Gilbert was feeling a little selfish and patted the space next to him. He rolled onto his side to watch Lovino lie down and the way the moonlight spilled over his form, marred by scars and freckles yet so strangely beautiful still.

Lovino shivered as Gilbert ran his fingers along the scar on his arm. He turned his head to look at him, eyes clouded but calm. Gilbert scooted a little closer.

“Thank you,” he said.

Lovino smiled faintly, reaching up a hand to push Gilbert’s hair from his eyes. He didn’t reply, but continued to pet Gilbert’s hair as he began to doze.

Gilbert didn’t really want to go to sleep. It had been too long since he had felt this peaceful, and he knew that by dawn it would be over, and Lovino would be gone. Though there was a part of him that really wanted Lovino to stay, he knew that that was impossible. They were two strangers, two different persons when the sun rose.

But for now he was comfortable, and he was tired—so tired—and as he dozed, Lovino began to hum softly, a melody he didn’t know, yet found an archaic sort of peace in. He clung to it for as long as he could, to that gentle sound, to Lovino, to consciousness, but eventually sleep took over, and the darkness closed in.

**Author's Note:**

> Hmm I thought about whether or not to leave this an open end, but I decided it was nicer to leave it up to the reader’s imagination whether Lovino leaves or stays in the morning.
> 
> Anyway I hope yall are doing fine under the current circumstances!! May this fic force you to stay home out of embarrassment 😘


End file.
